Redken All Soft Dupes, Ranked by Ingredient List and Price

Read the two panels side by side and the family resemblance is hard to miss. Matrix runs aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium chloride, glycol distearate, hexylene glycol. Redken runs aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, dimethicone, disodium cocoamphodiacetate, glycol distearate, hexylene glycol. Same pearliser, same solvent, near enough the same position, which follows from L'Oreal owning both brands. Both then carry salicylic acid, guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride and dimethicone. In the shower that means the same dense pearlised lather and the same wet-comb through waist-length hair.

Where they part company is the payload. Redken's RCT Protein Complex is argan oil, arginine, hydrolyzed soy protein and hydrolyzed vegetable protein PG-propyl silanetriol. Matrix swaps all four for avocado oil and sodium hyaluronate: emollient and humectant, no protein anywhere on the list. If your hair is bleached and stretches when wet, you will feel that absence by the third wash.

Two ingredients sit in the Matrix list that Redken's does not have. Sodium lauryl sulfate is third, ahead of the amphoteric co-surfactant, which makes it a harder cleanse on colour-treated hair. Menthol is in there too, and on an irritated scalp the tingle is not pleasant.

The saving depends on where you shop. Planet Beauty lists 10.1 fl oz at $22.00 against Redken's $25.00 at Shop Social. Ulta lists the same Matrix bottle at $24.00, which wipes most of that out. The UK gap is the one worth acting on: £15.12 against £22.21 for the same 300 ml, both checked 26 August 2026. Ulta shoppers rate it 4.6 from 1,369 reviews.

The conditioner is the half of All Soft that does the work, and it is built oddly for something this mainstream. After water and cetearyl alcohol it goes to behentrimonium chloride at three and palm oil at four, with stearamidopropyl dimethylamine at eight. The only silicone on the list is potassium dimethicone PEG-7 panthenyl phosphate at 17, which is water-soluble. That is why All Soft can feel this slippery on day one and still not go flat by day four.

Matrix reaches the same slip by a blunter route. Dimethicone sits at position three, amodimethicone at seven, with behentrimonium chloride at five and cetrimonium chloride at nine carrying the charge. It detangles as well as Redken's and arguably better on coarse hair. It also deposits ordinary silicone, so fine or low-porosity hair will look greasy sooner and you will want a clarifying wash every couple of weeks.

The other gap is protein. Redken's conditioner carries argan oil, arginine, hydrolyzed soy protein and the same Sepicap ingredient as its shampoo, at positions 20 to 23. Matrix has avocado oil, sodium hyaluronate, tocopherol, sunflower seed oil and rosemary leaf extract, and no protein whatsoever. On healthy hair that is a non-issue. On bleached ends it means softness with no rebuild underneath it.

$22.00 for 10.1 fl oz at Planet Beauty, though it was showing sold out on 26 August 2026, so Ulta is the reliable US link. In the UK, LOOKFANTASTIC sells it only inside a 300 ml duo at £24.19, against £37.04 for the equivalent Redken duo.

$6.49 for 12.6 fl oz works out at $0.52 an ounce against All Soft's $2.48. What you get for it is closer to Redken than the price suggests, because L'Oreal builds its drugstore shampoos on the same chassis as its salon ones. Dream Lengths runs aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, dimethicone, then picks up guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, salicylic acid, amodimethicone, hexylene glycol and glycol distearate. All Soft uses the same pearliser, the same guar polymer and the same salicylic acid.

It also carries hydrolyzed soy protein, the exact protein Redken names in its RCT complex, alongside hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed corn protein. The oil is castor rather than argan, with niacinamide and panthenol added.

Two honest problems. The fragrance is loud and the allergen declaration is long: hydroxycitronellal, limonene, benzyl salicylate, linalool, alpha-isomethyl ionone, geraniol, citronellol, coumarin and hexyl cinnamal. A reactive scalp will not enjoy this bottle.

The reviews split by venue, which is worth knowing before you buy. Target shows 4.36 out of 5 across 1,062 ratings. L'Oreal's own site shows 3.1 out of 5 from 71 reviews, several of them complaining that a recent reformulation left hair flat, dry or greasy. I read that gap as a sound formula and a contentious recent batch. One buying note: the Target listing defaults to the 28 fl oz bottle at $9.49, which is $0.34 an ounce and the cheapest way into this formula if you know you like it.

If the part of All Soft you would miss is how hair feels afterwards rather than what is in the bottle, this is the $6.99 answer. The panel on Target's listing runs water, sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate, cocamidopropyl betaine, glycol distearate, Argania Spinosa kernel oil. Argan at position five is doing real work; in All Soft it sits at 23 of 36, behind the preservatives. Glycol distearate gives the same pearly opacity. Slip comes from polyquaternium-22, linoleamidopropyl PG-dimonium chloride phosphate, PEG-7 amodimethicone and polyquaternium-39, which between them coat the cuticle much the way Redken's dimethicone and guar polymer do.

It cleanses with olefin sulfonate rather than laureth sulfate, so it qualifies as sulfate-free without being mild. Olefin sulfonate strips.

Two things to know before you swap. There is no protein in the formula at all, so it will not do what All Soft's hydrolyzed soy protein and arginine do for damaged lengths. And it is dyed with Yellow 5 and Red 40, which matters only if you are avoiding azo colourants, though it is a strange thing to rinse through bleached hair.

Target rates it 4.62 out of 5 from 7,699 ratings and prices it at $0.54 an ounce, a fifth of what All Soft costs per ounce. Judge it by wash three rather than wash one; the coating flatters immediately and the cleanse is what you feel later.

Verb's list shares four things with Redken's that most so-called dupes do not: cocamide MIPA, glycol distearate, Argania Spinosa kernel oil and guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride. The argan sits at position nine here against 23 in All Soft. It then goes somewhere Redken does not, adding ceramide NP and squalane alongside babassu seed oil.

The reason to reach for this over the Matrix is what is missing. No sulfates, no dimethicone, and a preservative system of sodium benzoate, phenoxyethanol and potassium sorbate rather than anything on the standard contact-allergy panel. Benzyl salicylate is the only declared fragrance allergen. Against All Soft's coumarin, linalool and limonene, that is the shortest list on this page.

The trade is real and you meet it on the first wash. Strip out the dimethicone and wet detangling gets harder, so on long hair budget an extra minute and a conditioner you trust. Sodium C14-16 olefin sulfonate is the lead surfactant here, which is sulfate-free in the labelling sense while still cleansing hard.

$22.00 for 12 fl oz from Verb direct and the same $22.00 at Ulta, so $1.83 an ounce against Redken's $2.48. Ulta reviewers give it 4.3 from 363 reviews, a softer score than the Matrix bottle gets, which fits a shampoo that asks you to give up slip. I could not verify a UK stockist, so treat this as a US recommendation.

Kenra sits in the same salon-distribution tier as Redken and undercuts it on price: $17.99 for 10.1 fl oz at SleekShop, marked down from $21.00, which is $1.78 an ounce against All Soft's $2.48, or about 28% less. Ulta charges the full $21.00 for the same bottle, so the saving lives at the discounter. The brief is moisture deficiency rather than repair, which is the same brief All Soft answers.

The current published list runs sodium laureth sulfate second, cocamide MEA third, cocamidopropyl betaine fourth, then glycol stearate and polyquaternium-10, with glycerin, shea butter, butylene glycol, squalane and propylene glycol doing the moisture work. Polyquaternium-10 handles the conditioning-polymer job that guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride does in All Soft. There is no argan oil and no arginine anywhere in it, and the only protein fragment is an oat peptide.

One caveat I could not resolve. Three versions of this panel circulate: the current Kenra Professional list above, an older Kenra Moisturizing list carrying blueberry fruit and honey extract plus sodium lauryl sulfate, and an abbreviated one on SleekShop's own page. They disagree on the surfactants. The evidence here is rated moderate for that reason.

Fragrance is declared with benzyl salicylate, linalool, hexyl cinnamal and limonene, so this is not the sensitive-scalp option. Ulta buyers rate it 4.6 from 606 reviews.